Dark Crystal Landstrider Costume Puppet Restoration

This Dark Crystal Landstrider costume head is an original movie prop from Jim Henson’s 1982 film.

The Dark Crystal Landstrider prop was conserved at our New York studio. When the piece arrived, the prop’s condition was very poor & fragile. Large sections of the puppet’s foam latex skin were crumbling or missing altogether. Worn as a sort of combination of a puppet and a costume, restoring this unique mask presented a number of challenges!

With a portion of the foam latex face missing, some areas had to be sculpted from scratch. To make sure every detail is screen accurate we turned to the film and researched to find vintage behind the scenes photos and used those as reference for the restoration. Missing areas were carefully built up with archival mediums and methods and newly sculpted to match the style and age of the piece we were repairing.

We were also extremely careful in touching up the paint on the repairs of this Dark Crystal Landstrider prop. As always, we turn to “in painting,” where only the repair is painted and original material is left untouched. Our artists put in the extra time to be sure that the restored areas were carefully matched to the existing colors and pearlescent look of the original costume piece for a seamless look.